Beyond design thinking and into speculative futures in legal design

Abstract

The Legal Design movement has succeeded in proposing change to communities through collaboration between the legal and design professions. As a result, new kinds of empathetic solutions have been introduced where the citizen experience is prioritized over commercial goals. Still missing from Legal Design, however, is a stronger understanding of current theoretical literature in design that is questioning the ontology of the discipline and formulating new scenarios of transition toward the future. This paper encourages an embrace of these methodologies and cautions against their use without a solid understanding of the present and a real understanding of their potential effects. The methods of “futuring” used by designers can help the legal profession imagine better futures with a view toward implementation. These futures keep the moral compass straight for leaders whose exercise of power leads to injustice and how people can have access to justice, governance, and accountability within difficult situations.